Soft Rock with John Christensen

Soft Rock with John Christensen

This week, on Taste the Music, John Christensen draws a straight line from hair metal to acid jazz, and leaves nothing in between. The lanking upright bass player’s 2024 album, Soft Rock, absolutely rips. There are riffs, like the first lines of the opening track, The Loudest Whisper, that sound like an arena rock band could have played them. With rock gods Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai as major influences, John's music has a harder edge to it, yet, John’s melodies are like his overall personality; there are subtleties. A 13/8 time signature here. A delicate chord change there. A transition from one ballad to another that makes you feel like redemption might just be around the corner for the human race. Thanks to the caring and thoughtful John Christensen for joining us today on another episode of Taste the Music. You can find all of John’s music, including his brilliant album, Soft Rock, at https://johnchristensenmusic.com [https://johnchristensenmusic.com]. This episode was written and produced by Mark Griffin. Taste the Music was created by Whitney Mann and Mark Griffin.

Whitney Mann and the Electric Heart

Today, on Taste the Music, show co-creator Whitney Mann comes to talk about her new single, called Electric Heart, that is available everywhere on Friday . She also reveals some ways the scene has changed and some ways it hasn’t, and how a person in her esteemed position stops worrying so much about the past. Whitney Mann, singer, songwriter, and storyteller, has played with the likes of Willie Nelson and Loretta Lynn. Her melodies, a combination of country grit and folky singer/songwriter assuredness, rope you in from the moment they waft across the bar and into your ears. Whitney has a new single, Electric Heart, coming out Friday June 5 on Bandcamp and all the other places you can listen to music. It’s a banger. She’s playing Tumbled Rock Brewery in Baraboo on June 6 and August 16, Sheboygan July 9th, Shell Lake on August 16 – she’s everywhere – then a very special Electric Heart EP release show on September 11 at the Burr Oak with some very very special guests and surprises. Don’t miss it. Learn more at Whitneymann.com. Today’s show was produced and edited by Mark Griffin. Taste the music was created by Whitney Mann and Mark Griffin. Every episode, including the very first episode of Taste the Music in which Whitney Mann tells her origin story – it’s a beautiful episode – is available at TasteTheMusic.org [http://tastethemusic.org] or all the places you get your pods.

Helen Feest: Building community one jam at a time

Feestet's jazz jams are steaming hot affairs, even when the air is crisp in the atmosphere. Bandleader and singer Helen Feest belts out tunes on vocals, and the band warms up the already misty crowd while jammers await their turn on the stage. Today, on Taste the Music, Helen Feest joins us to talk about the vibe, how she got into this crazy thing called jazz singing, and what kind of outfit she’s running anyway (it turns out it’s a good one). She also gets into how a very old way of getting paid might just be making a comeback (not that one!). And it’s helping build a little community, too. Today’s episode of Taste the music was written, produced, and edited by me, Mark Griffin. You can check out more of Helen Feest and the Feestet’s music at Feestet.com. Taste the music was created by me and Whitney Mann, who has a new single out on Bandcamp, right this second! Solid horns!

Paul Otteson: Finding Purpose in the Music

Paul Otteson’s music is like a message in a bottle that was tossed in a loch west of Glasgow, that drifted along the jet stream to the New World. It stopped in Brooklyn’s folk revival scene in the early aughts to pick up a pleasant spacey jangly sound that eschews the stomp clap hey of the early teens and it made its way via the fur trade up to the waters of the Gitche Gumme and down to the land of Dejope. Today, on Taste the Music, Paul Otteson talks about the passions that made his journey in songwriting worth it - and they weren’t always musical in nature. He also tells us about the reckoning that comes with comparing yourself to others, and about the comfort that can follow. Today's episode was produced, written and edited my me, Mark Griffin, and engineered by Aaron Scholz at WORT studios. You can learn more about Paul Otteson and his band Faux Fawn at PaulOtteson.com [PaulOtteson.com] or on Bandcamp [https://paulotteson.bandcamp.com/]. As usual, you can find all episodes of Taste the Music at TastetheMusic.org [TastetheMusic.org] or wherever you get your podcasts.

Uriel Lopez Rodriguez: Bringing the Love to Music Performance

Today, on Taste the Music, on 89.9 WORT FM Madison and TasteTheMusic.org [http://tastethemusic.org], Madison band Automatic Lover’s front man Uriel Lopéz Rodriguez takes us on a ride through his musical history, from a kid who couldn’t stop dancing to a short political career in Mexico, to Arizona, Colorado and finally back to Wisconsin, when a week visiting friends led him back to the music scene he couldn’t avoid. It seemed like wherever I went last summer, Automatic Lover was there, a rhythm section, horns, keys, stalwarts in their craft of groove. And up front on vocals, Uriel Lopéz-Rodriguez, clapping his hands, urging the crowds, electrifying the audience with each beat. The music, a sound that’s somehow a fusion of latin funk, Reggae, hip hop, and groove rock. An amalgam, a reflection of what a diverse music town is on its best days. Lopéz Rodriguez talks about forming Automatic Lover, why he’s committed to it, and the idea that maybe a vocation isn’t singular. Maybe it’s a patchwork of creation, iteration and praxis, incubating a social movement of love that’s a lot more complex than it looks on paper.